Silver award at the 6th Slovenian Innovation Forum (2011)

Bogdan Filipič, Miha Mlakar, Erik Dovgan and Tea Tušar received Silver award at the 6th Slovenian Innovation Forum for Pedius, a system for computer-aided reconstruction of wall paintings.

Restoration of wall paintings (frescoes) from fragments of mortar walls found at archaeological sites is an extremely demanding job: there is a large number (possibly several thousand) fragments of various shape and size, the fragments found are damaged and the wall paintings are incomplete, with many missing parts. The Pedius computer-aided system makes the restoration procedure considerably easier. The Pedius system enables digitalisation, recording and assistance in putting the fragments together so that they appear in the original wall painting. Since the wall painting takes shape on a computer, it is not necessary to try physically whether the pieces fit together in a sand-box; hence, time is not wasted and there is no further damage to the fragments. For the digitalisation and recording the fragments found, the user has to provide the digital pictures of the fragments, whereas the system identifies their properties such as the size of the fragments and the colours on them and enters these particulars in the database. The characteristics of the system being particularly useful include the support for the alternative compositions using the same groups of fragments, their comparison and combinations obtained, and it all leads to the results being far better than bothering with a simple linear composition of fragments.